Each time I put out a new edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, I always try to find a way to get another African country in there and always come up short when I start digging into the research. So I only have Morocco and Egypt and always get some swipes from reviewers or blog readers for devoting so little space to Africa.

The problem is, that flack usually comes from people who have never tried to travel overland on a budget. Every time I interview someone who has spent weeks or months backpacking in Africa, they inevitably say some version of these two sentences. “Unless you sleep and eat like a local, you’re going to spend far more than you expected” and “for such poor countries, prices for travelers are really high.”

These two similar statements derive from a whole litany of reasons related to economics, infrastructure, and history. It doesn’t help that three of the last four years the $5 million Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa has gone to…nobody.

The one Africa traveler who hasn’t given me this usual negative litany is ultra-savvy budget traveler Andy Graham, better known as the Hobo Traveler. He’s been on the road non-stop for 14 years and has spent a fair chunk of that in Africa.

I caught up with him via Skype while he was hanging out in Lome, Togo, a faded bohemian French Colonial town on the Atlantic coast. He describes it as “like 1920s Paris, the cultural whorehouse of West Africa.”

We talked about the need to avoid the big tourist draws and agreed that you probably need a Western Europe sized budget if you’re going to the safari destinations of Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, or Namibia. Here’s my quote from him on the most popular destination though: “I have no desire to go to South Africa, partly because it’s got three times the cost of living of any other country on the continent and partly because it has the highest rate of crime and AIDS. Yet that’s where all the travelers go at some point.”

That still leaves 40-some countries out there though. Here are his opinionated tips for traveling the continent on a budget.

Know your mission and stick to the mission.
“The media has pummeled Africa with this perception that it is such a poor mess. So most of the white people here are missionaries, state-sponsored aid workers, or are working for non-governmental agencies. There aren’t a whole lot of real travelers. Most people seem to travel so they can have good memories they can explain to their friends. I tell people I’m going to Africa they say, Who are you trying to save?’

So the first question is, why are you coming? The average traveler hates Africa. He or she has a list of things to see and do. Most of Africa is not for that, it’s a place for a cultural trip, for learning about people, languages, customs. There are very few animals in Western Africa because they ate them all or poached them. The British saved them in Kenya and elsewhere for hunting preserves. Only a few spots have a lot of them. On most of the continent it’s about connecting with people—black people of course—-which is not why most people travel. ”

Don’t come for the same reasons you went to Peru or Egypt
“Don’t come to Africa to find things to brag about with your friends back home. If you’re looking to do that the whole time, your options are limited and you’ll spend a load of money no matter how frugally you try to do it.

Know what you’re here for and don’t come to be entertained—unless you’re a sex tourist. And don’t come to Africa just to hang out with other white people. Sitting around drinking with white people is quite expensive in Africa. A flashpacker coming to Africa is going to get killed money-wise. To sit around in a huddle drinking beer and going online to post photos on Facebook is going to cost you a fortune.

Negotiate Hard for Everything
“Africa has a reputation for trying to rip off foreigners, especially West Africa. I had a much harder time before I learned to speak French. In Ghana and parts of East Africa they speak English and don’t’ make everything such a hassle, so it’s easier.

Whether we admit it or not, we white travelers have these preconceived notion of black people. We expect people to act a certain way and look for ways to support that expectation. But they’re mostly Just normal people trying to make a living. On one hand it’s so safe here in Tome you practically have to leave money on the table overnight to get physically robbed. But they’ll try to rob you blind in every transaction all day long because they’re used to white people being idiots. All these NGO and project workers have practically unlimited budgets. Lots of them will stay in the best hotels, drink beer every night, and go out to the best restaurants. So business owners become accustomed to charging ever white person five times as much as a local because they truly think we’re all rich and stupid with our money.

You have to keep money in perspective and prove you’re not an idiot. A guy tried to charge me $8 today for wire ties at a store. I told him ‘You’re crazy. You’re probably living on $2 a day, right?’

‘No,” he tells me, ‘Just $1 a day.’

Much of Africa earning that $1 to $2 a day. Treat $20 like it’s nothing and people will keep charging you accordingly.

It’s hard for us to look at a black person and say, ‘You’re f%cking ripping me off!’ We’re so conditioned to think that’s racist. We think we’re supposed to treat them with extra respect because their life sucks. But their life doesn’t suck. You’re not “dissing” them to argue or criticize. You have to argue constantly. It’s normal. If you don’t they think you’re another rich idiot working for Oxfam just to fill out the resume.

There’s no political correctness here. In the market people will yell, ‘Hey white guy! Hey fatso! Sexy blondie!’ Learn to talk like they do to get things done.”

Spend the time to get a good hotel deal.
“Anyone charging you $30 a night for a basic hotel room in most of Africa is ripping you off. The tourism industry here is probably the worst on the planet: they try to gouge every white person, assuming they’re all idiots. Many of them are idiots. Outside of big cities and resort areas, paying more than $10 or $15 a night for a basic hotel is absolutely getting ripped off. In

Arrive before noon to have time to find a hotel. Walk in and tell them how much you want to pay. You say $5, they say $30, eventually to your real budget. But you have to have a real budget and stick to it. Be willing to walk out and keep looking.

When I walk into a hotel, they always take me to the best room in the hotel. They can’t believe I don’t want that room, they’re aghast. They slowly work their way down until I’m leaving and they finally show me the $5 room. You have to assume anyone who takes you anywhere is taking you to the most expensive option. Continually refuse and stay on budget, on mission. A basic room with a bulb and bath starts at $5, a table adds a dollar, hot water adds a dollar, and each other thing keeps adding up. But I can go to the best hotel in town and use the pool for a dollar, so why do I need the hotel with a pool? You can rent a room here for a whole month for $50 if you work on it.

You also have to get over the stigma of the ‘chamber de passage.’ Probably 90% of the hotels in Africa are love hotels. There are just not enough traveling salesmen or domestic tourists to support many cheap hotels. So hotel customers are mostly NGO workers at the high end and locals getting some privacy on the low end. Every hotel I go into I assume someone’s going to bring in a girl and go at it next door. But at least there’s always a maid around. They’re private, comfortable, and cheap.

Also understand that nothing is ever cleaned like an American would clean it. It’s cleaner than India maybe, but not to the standards of say, Thailand or Vietnam. I’ll get the $8 or $10 room and pay the maid a few bucks to truly clean the bathroom. She’s thrilled and I get a room that’s up to the cleanliness level of one you’d get in Southeast Asia. Otherwise that would be $40 here. But we’re so used to convenience. ‘Why should I have to clean the sink? Or fix the toilet myself?’ Because you’re in a $5 room, that’s why. If you want convenience, get a $50 room.

One important point: traveling with someone else is far cheaper. The room price is the room price-one person pays the same as two. ”

Your guidebook is probably useless.
You won’t find most love hotels listed in your guidebook because the majority of Africa guidebook writers are current or former aid workers. Most of the hotels they recommend have parking because the writers are driving everywhere in a car. The cheaper love hotels people walk to. The outside space is just a shady tree people can sit under and drink a beer. ‘No parking’ means it’s for Africans and will be cheap.

The LP and Rough Guides are both terrible. Many of the writers are completely clueless and have grilled me for hours to get the most basic information. They’re written for people driving a car and staying at hotels that can be reached by car.

Whatever you do don’t rely on TripAdvisor. That’s even worse.

Avoid the Clingons
“When you get off a plane or bus there will be a boy or young man following you around and speaking your language. Often you can spot them before you even get off because they’re the only people in Africa with dreadlocks. They’re aggressive touts pure and simple and I promise you none are ever there to do you a favor. If you’re a woman they’re probably looking for a sugar mama and if you’re a man they’re trying to soak you for whatever they can to be your ‘helper.’ ?

Planning is a waste of time in Africa.
“The more you plan, the more you’re going to screw up. Everything is going to go wrong. It’s much better to just wing it as you go. In any city under 150,000 people I take a taxi tour of the city and say ‘Show me the $10 hotels.’ He’ll take me to the most expensive places first of course no matter what I say. Finally he gets frustrated and takes me to the cheap ones. I’m going to have to invest an hour or two of work to save $10, but I’m going to stay there a week so that’s $70 for two hours of work.

Don’t travel more than 4 hours a day, do it in the morning so you arrive before noon. It’s tiresome and you can run into all sorts of problems. If things go wrong, you’ve got a cushion. An 8-hour trip can easily become 12. The torture of travel often comes from trying to do too much.

Start out in a cheap country like Ghana or Malawi to get your bearings and get over the culture shock. Then you’ll be ready to take on the tougher places.”

Don’t be a bum.
“Being a bum is accepting less than what you deserve in life. Stand your ground and be a king instead. Refuse to get in a vehicle that already has 25 people in it. Just wait for the next one. Someone will say, ‘There are no more cars today.’

‘Bullshit. You’re lying,’ I’ll reply.

Every single time a new empty car or bus shows up soon after.

If you’re not trying to race across vast distances in a hurry, you’ve got more leverage to wait, to negotiate. If you’re willing to walk out of the hotel because they won’t budge, you’ll get a room you like for the right price. Being in a hurry will cost you.

In Ethiopia you have to take a truck overland for more than a day to head out of this one spot. A guy wanted me to ride on the canvas roof of a cattle truck for 27 hours, with cattle horns below me. ‘I’d rather live in this city for the rest of my life than ride on top of that truck for 27 hours,’ I said. I waited around and got on a grain truck where we could sleep on top of the grain sacks. Backpackers go to Africa thinking they have to be a bum. I have back problems so I’ll pay someone a dollar to carry my bag. I require a nice room for $10. What I expect is what I get.”

Get out of the big cities.
“NGO and Peace Corp workers love big cities with their big offices, so there are lots of cafes and bars for white expatriates. That makes many people feel comfortable. But prices for everything are three times more than they’ll be once you get 50 miles out of town. So don’t come all this way just to hang out in Accra, Nairobi, or Dakar.

Budgets don’t get killed by one thing. They get killed by a lot of little things. And every little thing is more in the big cities.

If your mission is to hang around a city and socialize online with your friends back home, why leave home?”

Don’t eat every meal at restaurants.
“African food is generally kind of bland, meant to be filling and fattening. There are far more fat people here than you would expect. It’s hard to get vegetables when you eat out, so I always cook vegetables in the room from a market or store and buy fruit to eat. I used to use a hot plate. You can buy one for $5 a lot of times. But hotel owners don’t like you to use them. So now I use a cheap homemade alcohol cooker.

When looking for a restaurant, don’t eat where white people are. Then study the menu and figure out what you can eat on a budget. Or just tell them what you want and agree on a price. They’ll usually make it for you if they have the ingredients. ”

***

To see what Andy is up to right now, see the Hobo Traveler blog.

If I did include a country in the next edition, it would probably be Ghana or Malawi. This BootsnAll article on traveling in Malawi for $25 a day is encouraging, though it does say you need to sleep in dorm beds and eat what the locals eat. Fortunately eating what the local eat here does not mean bland gruel for three meals a day.

My dentist in Mexico studied in the U.S., does great work, and is seldom in a hurry. He gets all the local gringo business and probably charges more as a result, yet what our family of three paid over the course of a year there was about 1/4 what it would have cost in a mid-sized U.S. city.

Afar magazine ran an infographic earlier this year in the print edition that showed approximate costs for different procedures in the USA vs. what it would cost you elsewhere. Almost anywhere in the world is cheaper than here for health care, of course, for a long list of reasons: high insurance/litigation, high doctor payments, a for-profit system, insurance company lobbyist power, and an upside-down system where it’s easier to get reimbursed for a problem than prevention.

Here are a few examples from their list though:

Fertility treatment: $15,000 USA, $4,400 Costa Rica

Hip replacement: $33,000 USA $12,500 in Mexico

Knee replacement: $34,000 USA, $16,500 Singapore (half again in Mexico, from what I’ve heard locally)

Coronary bypass: $88,000 USA, $21,000 Taiwan

Gastric bypass: $25,000 USA, $8,200 Malaysia

Spinal fusion: $41,000 USA, $9,500 India

Here’s a link to a great medical costs chart in the Washington Post showing what standard procedures like CT scans, MRIs, and C-section deliveries cost. A few zingers from that:

Having a baby the normal way: $9,280 here, $1,291 Argentina

C-section delivery: $14,374 here, $3,145 Spain

Hospital overnight stay: $3,949 here, $632 Germany

The only procedure on the chart where the U.S. was not the most expensive was for cataract surgery. Apparently Switzerland is more pricey for that.

Now back to dental work, which has a huge disparity and it’s something you spend money on regularly even if you’re in good health. A crown that will set you back $750 – $900 in the United States will cost 1/3 that in Hungary or Costa Rica—and get done faster. If you have seen the prices on Groupon for a dental check-up and cleaning at half price, half it again and that’s probably what you will pay in Mexico.

For even minor procedures, if you have a co-pay and a big deductible (or you’ve got nothing), getting it done overseas can save you serious money, even when you factor in travel costs.

One specific one to keep in mind if you’re departing on a long round-the-world trip: vaccinations. Some require a series of shots over time. A couple times when circling the globe I got the second or third one in Bangkok instead of locally. Sure, it was a bit of a hassle, but it cut the cost in half.

What have you had done abroad that has saved you a bundle?

If you know someone about to hit retirement age, like your parents maybe, here’s a good travel book for them that has a chapter from yours truly.

65 Things to Do When You Retire – Travel is a collection of essays on various aspects of travel for the older set. Yes, there are 65 essays in here and the list price is 20 bucks, so a great deal. (It’s only $11 at Amazon as I write this.) All the profits go to cancer research charities too. (We submitted our work pro bono.)

It’s broken up into sections on prepping, deciding where to go, ways to travel, voluntourism options, and much more. It’s a primer on the possibilities and how to get the most from travel in the golden years.

My essay will not be a surprise to readers of this blog or my books. It’s called “Pick the right place and traveling is not expensive.” Hopefully I’ll convince a few seniors to go beyond Western Europe, RV travel, or a Caribbean cruise.

I was happy to appear alongside some other writers I know of and respect. Ed Perkins actually has a guest section in one of my books. Here he does an overview of senior travel deals.

Janice Waugh heads up the Solo Traveler blog and does an essay on traveling alone.

Rick Ingersoll writes the Frugal Travel Guy blog, one of my favorites for finding points/miles opportunities and he shares some advice on leveraging good credit for lots of frequent flier miles and free hotel stays.

I was on a trade show panel once that TV host and author Richard Bangs was moderating  and here he talks about the bucket list topper Machu Picchu in Peru.

Donna Hull of the boomer travel site My Itchy Travel Feet contributes a piece on being so taken by Montana when visiting that she moved there.

Barbara Weibel of Hole in the Doughnut talks about making local connections when traveling.

I met Judith Fein at an adventure travel conference and now she writes for me sometimes, including this Azores public art story recently in Perceptive Travel. Her story is on finding a spiritual connection in Israel.

As you can tell just from these examples, it’s a delightfully mixed bag, without repetition. Editor Mark Evan Chimsky did a nice job of picking people with something interesting to say and then keeping them from ranbling on for more than six or seven pages. Get 65 Things to Do When You Retire – Travel for the friend or relative who can use it. This is a thoughtful gift that won’t set you back much and it’s helping a good cause.

Get it at Amazon U.S., UK, or Canada. Oddly, there’s no Kindle version so far.

Want a copy for free? Sign up for the new RSS feed or e-mail version top right of this page—rss icon or e-mail box—then leave a comment below on why you would want the book. (I’ve switched from Google Feedburner to Feedblitz, so you can delete your old feed and keep the new if you end up with both.) Deadline April 15.

Can you round up $68,500 in ready or borrowed cash? If so you can be the owner of a furnished beach house in Mexico and can cut your monthly living expenses in half. Or just have a cheap place to be a snowbird or go on vacation.

About a year and a half ago I announced on this blog that my Yucatan beach house in Mexico was for sale. Well, it still is.

We took it off the market a while during the rainy season and while it’s being rented a lot right now in high season, it’s still waiting for a buyer.

We own this place free and clear, so it’s not like there’s a mortgage gnawing at us, but we bought another house in Guanajuato, in the central highlands. We’re moving into that one come August for two years. We’d like to have the cash from house 1 to get debt free and flush so we’ve got plenty to put into beautifying house 2.

As you may have heard on the news, the housing market in the U.S. is in recovery mode now, to the point where there are bidding wars again in some cities because of a lack of inventory. While some savvy investors no doubt bought houses for $68,500 or even less the past few years because of bank foreclosures, they weren’t getting property one house back from a beach and those homes weren’t usually nice enough to be move-in ready. This one is both.

You can follow the link at the bottom for more details, but this is a well-maintained 2BR, 1 bath house with a nice covered outside terrace and plenty of room to build up or put in a pool. It’s a 30-second walk to the water and three blocks to the town square. There are already local caretakers in place we’ve worked with for years. It comes with beds that sleep four and all the other furniture there now, plus a fridge, dishes, and a bottle of 100% agave tequila we’ll supply upon closing.

This beach house is 40 minutes from the international airport in Merida, a city of a million, or less than four hours by rental car from Cancun.

If you’re wondering about home prices in Mexico in other non-tourist places, we paid a shade less than $90,000 for the Guanajuato house. It has four bedrooms, two baths, with a big sun room on the top floor that has terrific views. But right now it’s got a kitchen that we hate and no furniture…

So buy this bargain Yucatan beach house for $68,500 bringing just a toothbrush and a bathing suit. Then come stay with us later in the revamped city one. Full details here: cheap furnished Mexican beach house.

 

I’ve been running this Cheapest Destinations blog since 2003 and the 4th edition of my international travel book will come out soon, so I’ve heard more than my share of excuses on why people can’t or don’t travel.

In all fairness, some of the reasons are really legit. “I’m a convicted felon” is one that may give you some visa trouble. “I can’t leave the country until the custody case is settled” is reasonable. “I don’t really enjoy packing up and leaving home” was a response from a friend that I really didn’t have an answer to. Fair enough. We can’t assume everyone likes to travel.  And some people really can’t. There are not many travel agencies in Cuba or North Korea.

If you live in a free country and want to travel but don’t, however, the excuses you give are probably the same ones I’ve heard 100 times. Apparently these 71 other travel bloggers have heard the same ones too as their sample excuses and responses are amazingly consistent.

The b.s. travel excuses

1) I can’t afford it.

2) I don’t have the time.

3) I’m (scared about) not good at foreign languages

4) My family wouldn’t approve (I’m scared to leave my family).

Why these travel excuses are usually b.s.

1) Unless you’re in such poverty that you can barely afford groceries, you can afford to travel. Because if you choose the right places, it’s cheaper than being home. Try shopping less, buying fewer gadgets, brewing your own coffee—in other words, prioritizing. Do some basic research and you’ll find ways to couchsurf, get free flights, work abroad, and in general get by for far less than you’re getting by now. If you have a job you can do from anywhere, you’re just plain nuts to live out all your years in an expensive country anyway.

2) If you’ve been in your job a year at least and don’t have a couple weeks to travel, something is seriously wrong. If you’re self-employed, even worse. That’s called not taking the time; it’s not a lack of time. Nobody is so important in their position that they can’t take a couple weeks to travel unless they have “president” or “prime minister” next to their name. If you’re worried nobody will miss you if you leave and you’ll be easily replaced with another warm body, then you’re not making much of an impact when you’re there are you?

3) Based on my 20-odd years of travel, you can get by with English alone in about 90% of the places you’ll go on this planet as a tourist, with Spanish taking care of another 5 or 6%. So unless you’re going to visit rural China or some undiscovered tribal region, I think you’ll survive. If you’ll be somewhere more than a couple weeks, you can pick up some basics with minimal effort and a phrase book. Heck, these days you can even take a real-time translator on a smart phone, Star Trek style.

4) I’ve heard so many iterations of this sequence now it’s become a short story I could write in my sleep. Daughter (it’s usually a woman) announces to her family that’s she’s going backpacking for a month, for the summer, maybe even for a year. A family member (usually the mother) responds that it’s a horrible idea, that she’ll be raped or killed, that she’s abandoning the family. She forges on and goes anyway, sending them photos along the way about her fantastic time and telling them all the things she’s seen and learned. She returns home looking fit and radiant, she’s worldly-wise, and she’s exhibiting a new self-reliant streak that’s going to help her create success on her own terms in the future. Her parents can’t stop telling their friends about her wonderful adventure and they share her photos with everyone they know.

Of all the 71 responses on that long blog post, which admittedly get a bit redundant, I like this one from Benny at Fluentin3Months the best:

Usually people will latch on to what seems like a totally logical reason to not travel, such as lack of money, no time, unable to get off work, family responsibilities and so on. At times these are legitimate, but many times the true reason they are not following this passion is fear, and the reason they give you when you ask is founded in nothing but this fear.

They can repeat the mantra of “I have no money” all they like, ignoring stark evidence about how they should embrace minimalism and stop buying so much crap, or perhaps they think that learning a language is a rare genetic gift even though over half the population of the planet is multilingual. It’s time they stepped outside of their self-fulfilling prophecies.

Like most things in life, finding the time or money to travel is just like finding the time or money to do anything else worthwhile: buy a house, reach a sales goal, raise a child, get good at a sport, get in shape, learn a language, write a book, finish a painting, dance the tango, or build a fence. Make it a priority and it’ll probably happen. Put it no higher on your list than the latest slightly better gadget Apple is feeding you, then it probably won’t.

Do you want to travel this year or are you just saying it would be nice? Like winning the lottery would be nice?

If you’re not just fantasizing, stop dreaming and start finding ways to make it work. See all the excuses and answers here.